Near field communication (NFC) is a technology of wirelessly exchanging data between devices separated by a short distance of at most about 10 cm. NFC can be applied to various applications such as credit card payment, money transaction, and authentication. Due to various advantages of NFC, NFC has been adapted to various electronic devices. For example, a user equipment supporting NFC has been introduced and can interact with other devices. The user equipment supporting NFC can read information from other devices separated by a short distance and search for related information in real-time. A user can utilize the user equipment supporting NFC for credit card payment, for money transaction, as a keycard, or as an ID card.
The user equipment supporting NFC may include a contactless front-end (CLF) unit, a processor, and an inductive coupling antenna. In this case, the CLF unit is typically electrically connected to the inductive coupling antenna. Since the user equipment supporting NFC also needs to support inter-chip USB (IC-USB), a fourth contact C4 and an eighth contact C8 of a UICC are used for IC-USB.
Since the contacts C4 and C8 are used for IC-USB, the related art user equipment supporting NFC cannot support a combi-UICC. The combi-UICC may be a UICC having a function of a smart card that provides identification, authentication, data storage, and application processing. When the combi-UICC is placed in a user equipment, the user equipment can be used similarly to a smart card. However, contacts C4 and C8 of the combi-UICC are typically mapped to an antenna. Accordingly, a user cannot use the combi-UICC with the related art user equipment supporting NFC due to the unavailability of contacts C4 and C8.